FT announces capacity upgrades on SEA-ME-WE4 and TAT14

France Telecom (FT) has reportedly upgraded two of its international consortium cable systems – SEA-ME-WE4 and trans-Atlantic TAT14. CommsDay reports that as part of its monthly corporate update, the French group, which is a member of each of the consortiums that manage the cables, has significantly upgraded overall capacity on each system. Commenting on the SEA-ME-WE4 upgrade, the report read: ‘By joining forces with major international carriers, France Telecom is increasing its broadband transmission capacity by 140% with the deployment of the second upgrade of this submarine cable,’ it said. ‘In less than three and a half years of service and following two upgrades, France Telecom has increased the initial capacity held in this cable tenfold, with the cable spanning a distance of 19,000km from Singapore to Marseille, linking Asia to Europe, crossing the Mediterranean and providing 14 countries with broadband connections following its start-up in November 2005.’

Meanwhile, the upgrade to the TAT14 cable is expected to give FT twice the previous capacity. ‘In partnership with four major European and North American carriers, France Telecom doubled its transmission capacity via TAT14 with the release for commercial use of the first upgrade of this submarine cable system, less than nine months after the contract was signed. The transatlantic lit capacity has been increased to 1.87Tbps,’ the group said. The TAT14 cable spans 15,000km linking Germany (Norden), the UK (Widemouth), Denmark (Blaabjerg), France (Saint-Valery-en-Caux) and the Netherlands (Katwijk) to the United States (Manasquan and Tuckerton, New Jersey).